I have decided to do the write in candidate for the Southeast Regional Director of USPA. Tell all your friends to write in Betty Hill. We need great representation for our area Drop Zones. Please tell all your friends.

From Bill:

It's USPA Director election time!! We are VERY excited to announce that our DZO Bill Scott has agreed to be a candidate for USPA Southeast Region Director! Those of you that have full USPA memberships have already received your email ballot. PLEASE WRITE IN Bill Scott's name as a candidate for the Southeast Region Director. Thanks everyone for your support!

I have decided to do the write in candidate for the Southeast Regional Director of USPA. Tell all your friends to write in Betty Hill. We need great representation for our area Drop Zones. Please tell all your friends.

From Bill:

It's USPA Director election time!! We are VERY excited to announce that our DZO Bill Scott has agreed to be a candidate for USPA Southeast Region Director! Those of you that have full USPA memberships have already received your email ballot. PLEASE WRITE IN Bill Scott's name as a candidate for the Southeast Region Director. Thanks everyone for your support!

I've known Bill Scott for 15 years. Always been a nice guy to me. If I was in that region I'd vote for him.

I'm getting messages, e-mails and reading about people that want me to "write-in" for positions and I personally think that that is bogus!

If anyone wants my vote, THEY should step up and say that they are running and ask me to write in their name. Please include why you are running and a short bio. Just because someone says to write in another name does not mean that they want to serve.

My name is Eric Elijah Florio and I am running a write-in campaign for SE Regional Director. I am an active skydiver, an AFF/Tandem instructor, Coach Examiner, National Judge, and advocate.

The intent of this post is to describe a few reasons why I am passionate about this position as well as address those that question the validity or dedication of a candidate who is not listed on the ballot.

I had not intended to run until my experience at this yearís USPA Canopy Piloting Nationals. After leading the judging for the FLCPA (Florida Canopy Pilots Association) league this past year alongside Al Berchtold and Kolla Kolbeinsdottir, I was astonished to see that at the US competition level, a local league was besting the USPA in many aspects. I believe the FLCPA got to where it is and is continuing to grow because of the dedication of its volunteers, judges, directors, and of course the competitors. We have spent countless days with each other and have a great collection of ideas and experiences that are unfortunately not being heard.

Equally important to me are the interests of our students and future skydivers. While working under the excellent leadership of Bram Cement and SkydiveRatings.com, I have been afforded the opportunity to teach and learn from some of the greatest skydivers and people that I have met. The invigoration I receive from helping students and rating candidates achieve their skydiving goals is unparalleled. Being active in this progress has also opened my eyes to many inadequacies in our training programs. I am far out numbered in both knowledge and experience to many other instructors, however, my dedication to students and to progressive education would greatly benefit the members of the USPA. With the help of leaders and students alike, we could continue to push skydiving education in the right direction.

I have decided to do what I can to help bridge the gap between competitors, members, and the USPA. My interests in this position are to further the relationship with competitors and the USPA at local and national levels via the competition committee, as well as support ideas and challenge the status quo of skydiving education.

When asked what role the USPA fills Ė many say ďGoverning Body.Ē Help me to use this position to instead represent our members.

I understand many may not have heard my name outside of education, swooping, or wingsuiting. I am also aware that these elections can be a popularity contest. However, I implore you to consider a candidate that is eager to use the position as a gateway between members and the USPA. Regardless of my nomination, I am dedicated to use my position as a USPA member to encourage these same changes this upcoming year. It is important we all do our part as members to voice our opinions, concerns, and provide suggestions to leadership.

Thank you for your consideration! If you have any questions please do not hesitate to respond. I actively keep up with DZ.com posts although I do not post often myself. If you would like to email me personally, please do so at eric@skydivepalatka.com

Iím glad you asked, Skymama. Some of the main issues I have seen are with canopy control fundamentals as well as the unfortunate dropzone mentality towards student skydivers. The USPA has designed an optional canopy progression card modeled after the standard student progression card, but is rarely, if ever, used. Additionally, the canopy control basics taught during the ISP are not built upon adequately past this point. We are still evaluating studentsí abilities based upon accuracy requirements even for licensing. Incidents are not caused from jumpers that are unable to land within 10 meters of a target.

Additionally, there exists a mentality towards student training that allows a student to show up at a dropzone for training and wait many hours and sometimes days before they are put in the air. These students have the potential to be our future teachers, world competitors, and sport advocates. How can we as an organization strive for a larger membership base when we are failing our students at the very start?

I do not presume to have the answers to these nor do I see them as being exhaustive. However, I do feel it is time we move beyond just talking about canopy training and utilize the extensive knowledge we have from educators and canopy pilots and develop a program that fits in with our current model.

There are many members that are willing to help, if asked. I do believe it is the memberís responsibility to openly communicate with the USPA, but I feel it is the responsibility of the leadership to actively engage with its members. Whomever we elect as our next RD, I encourage everyone to voice his or her concerns, praises, and options for improvement.

In addition I agree there are problems with the USPA instructional ratings process, and there should be a greater emphasis on creating instructors that understand the importance of safe canopy control and how to teach it. There also needs to be a focus on creating a pride in being a USPA rating holder, and not allow it to be cheapened by those that fail to follow the rules and guidelines laid out.

However I believe you miss the mark in thinking the USPA has any role in regulating the efficiency of a DZ putting students in the air. This is a MEMBERS organization, and not a dropzone regulatory body. Let the business owners sort that out through competition and the students will ultimately benefit through the success of good DZ's vs. poor DZ's.

First off thanks for posting and let me clarify my previous post. I completely agree with you that the USPA is not and should not be a dropzone regulator. However, I do envision the USPA as a resource and wealth of knowledge. My intention was more as a way of using the USPA as a means of communication and collective ideas and practices from whom other dropzones can learn. You mention the success of good DZís and poor DZís but what do you consider to be good and poor? A tandem focused DZ that is able to put up 150 students a day is, in my book, very successful. As far as retaining these students and building our membership, this dropzone may not provide much. For the majority of those dropzones though that are fueled by tandem incomes but have a healthy student program are more my focus. Even the instructors and dropzones with the best intent may let students slip through the cracks.

This is a unique industry in that we certainly have traditional business competition in an open market. But, as a community, I think we would like to help each other to bring in new students. Certainly I donít expect dropzones to give business to others, but I would like to think they would be willing to do their part to help other businesses develop programs to progress students adequately. Is it a matter of staffing? The time required for each student category/level? Iím sure there are many reasons. But, the USPA can provide a line of communication between dropzones and do it ideally without any singular dropzoneís influence. This can include voluntary submission of videos, course plans, ISP progressions, etc. Again, I donít expect the USPA to overhaul poorly operating DZs, but in the world of information and technology, it can provide a great service and act as a base of information.

As far as the issues I had with CP Nationals, I cannot even begin to communicate them all effectively on here. I will touch on a few main points though.

Communication: This failed at many levels from the competitors, principal judges, chief/event judges, course technical director, controller, meet director, and host. I dare not point fingers as we were all at fault to some degree. However, I can certainly blame the system (or lack thereof) in place. At the local level (FLCPA), how we run our meets is very strongly influenced by the needs and desires of the competitors, within reason. Afterall, this is THEIR meet.

Planning: A lot of these communication issues though could have been avoided with proper planning. Many portions of the competition werenít completed until at the last minute. Already understaffed, increasing the work load with unnecessary tasks due to poor planning and inefficiency as well as overworking the volunteers killed morale and certainly affected the mood of the competition. Additionally, the tools needed were substandard or nonexistent making the time necessary to judge increase greatly. A known issue was experienced with the FLCPA using the timing system, and this warning and resolution was expressed multiple times. For some reason, this was not heeded. The result: a failure as expected that cost a few jumpers multiple rejumps at their expense, also delaying the competition.

Concern for competitors & Scoring: There was also a lack of consideration on the part of the leadership towards the competitors. Multiple decisions were made based on what works best for the meet without really considering what also works well for the competitors. I feel bare minimums were not met. These include a consistent and timely schedule for the competitors to allow them to change gear as necessary as well as mentally prepare for the events. Scoring was always 10 steps behind, mostly due to planning and efficiency. Methods were provided by the FLCPA that have shown to increase efficiency, but these ideas were not listened to and instead an archaic system was used that created problems Ė many of which were solved by using the new system. CP scoring is more difficult and varying than any other discipline, but when prepared correctly, there is no reason competitors cannot have results in a timely manner. The FLCPA continuously has around 80% of the number of competitors as nationals, yet has a workload that is significantly less. By engaging competitors and judges that do this multiple times throughout the year instead of relying on those that do this only once a year, many problems could have been avoided.

Again, I would love to sit down with anyone truly interested in helping CP Nationals improve and Iím certain these ideas could parallel into the other disciplines. Again, thanks for asking and aside from the results of the election, I hope to see communication like this that uses your ideas collectively to help better the system for all of us.

You have already gone beyond what many members do in just voicing your view of the USPA and the role it should fill. If more people did this we might begin to get back OUR organization that seems to have slipped out of reach from all of us.

Also, I am planning some trips to dropzones around Florida and Georgia these coming weeks. I am curious to see what other members out there think. Even if I am not chosen to represent the SE region, I will certainly make sure some of these ideas are presented.

Eric, from my standpoint I'm going to have to say it's pretty easy for you to slam something you had no involvement in, and I can only wonder where your sources of information come from.

You feel like continuing this conversation, feel free to call me (951)852-8422

My sources are first hand experience, and a lot of it. I don't know where you got your information, but I was absolutely involved. You are certainly mistaken if you think it was someone else running scoring until 3am, offering last minute technical advice on the timing system, as well as coordinating with judges, etc, etc, etc ad nauseam. I will be glad to call you but it is inappropriate for you to "slam" me as I performed functions well above and beyond my duties as a judge. Knowing that i was indeed a judge at this year's nationals, I might suggest you reread my post.

On a side note, I think you did an excellent job as TCD especially with such short notice. The 2 brothers that Eric had helping also were invaluable.

Many of your points for improvements and failures were parts of many conversations had between us all at nationals as well as after. These conversations in addition to the competitors' discussions after the competition only matter if someone or a few are willing to make the improvements.

I will call you this weekend not only to clear up any misunderstanding you may have of my involvement, but also to get some more insight of your position and view of the meet.